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Personal Income (2004)

The " Record Layouts" are provided for the reproduction of DOR's scannable tax forms. The record layout is a 6 lines per vertical inch and 10 characters per horizontal inch spacing grid provided by DOR specifying the exact placement of all OCR-readable fields. Scannable tax forms submitted to DOR for approval must adhere to the record layouts provided for in the grids and must also adhere to the specifications set forth in the "Guide."

If you have any suggestions or comments on how to improve these forms, please contact us. Due to the volume of comments received, we will probably not be able to respond to you individually. However, we assure you that the information you provide will be taken into account to improve our forms.

Software Developer Guides:

The Personal Income Tax Software Developers Guide has been divided into 2 PDFs because of its size.

Personal Income Tax Software Developers Guide Part one (Revised 11/9/04)

The following changes have been made to the 2004 personal income tax forms:

New check field on the Form 1-NR/PY for nonresident composite return filers;

New deduction for commuters on Schedule Y, line 9;

E-file "opt-out" check field in signature area;

Circuit Breaker credit increased, not to exceed $820. Assessed value of principal residence not to exceed $441,000; taxpayer's total income not to exceed $44,000 for a single taxpayer, $55,000 for head of household and $66,000 for a joint return.

Taxpayers can now identify a "safe harbor" amount of use tax that they can self-assess when filing their income tax returns, based on the taxpayer's Massachusetts adjusted gross income. This method can be used in lieu of the Form 1, line 33 or Form 1-NR/PY, line 38 worksheets. Taxpayers electing to satisfy a use tax liability by estimating it shall calculate the liability in accordance with the following table and provisions. The estimated liability shall only be applicable to purchases of any individual items each having a total sales price of less than $1,000. For each taxable item purchased at a sales price of $1,000 or greater, the actual use tax liability for each purchase shall be added to the amount of the estimated liability derived from the below table.

NOTE: The Department of Revenue is NOT processing Form CA-6, Application for Abatement/Amended Return, as a scannable tax form for tax year 2004. There is NO record layout for Form CA-6; computer-generated versions should NOT have a barcode on pages 1 or 2 of this form. The barcode on the hand-print version is for position only. If the Department decides to process Form CA-6 as a scannable tax form in the future, a record layout and barcode will be created.

If you have any suggestions or comments on how to improve these forms, please contact us. Due to the volume of comments received, we will probably not be able to respond to you individually. However, we assure you that the information you provide will be taken into account to improve our forms.

You may e-mail us your comments - please include in the subject line of the message "Advance Proofs." Do not include any personal tax information about yourself or others (e.g., names, addresses, Social Security or employer ID numbers).